The year was 1901. In thirteen years, the Great War would break out. While machine guns had existed for the last 20 years or so, they were sparse and mostly used in colonial conflicts. There was a certain air of arrogance among the European powers, or more specifically their military leadership who were focused on the main army.
Machine guns were seen as a crude tool whose only use was mowing down savages. By 1914, when the Great War broke out, the Imperial German Army, who was one of the first nations to truly embrace the concept of the machine gun, had less than 400 total in their entire arsenal.
The French, who would be their initial rivals had perhaps two machine guns for every battalion of soldiers. It was a woefully foolish oversight on behalf of the European powers who would quickly come to realize the effectiveness of machine guns. Even if at the time they were heavy, cumbersome, and static weapons.
